Some will walk, a few will drive

On my drive to church this beautiful morning I passed scattered groups of Amish men, women and children, all dressed in Sunday best, walking the backroads of Lancaster County to the homes of fellow churchmembers where the day’s service would be held.

Suddenly, a raunchy red pickup containing a pair of suspiciously Amish-looking ‘hatted’ silhouettes pulled out in front of me and sped off ahead.

A few miles down the road, I caught up with the two young guys, who had parked just out of view of the home where church was taking place. Dressed to the nines, they hopped out and joined a crowd of younger boys walking up the road to service.Rumspringa means you get to sleep in a bit on Sunday morning.

I have a question, when the young are allowed to experience all these different things, do they often just adjust back to life without things like trucks? Or does being able to try these things give them a taste of something they cant then let go of?

Good question, I kind of doubt they’d go for it though a small handful might. The Amish often tell me that it’s hard to do unless you grew up that way, and I suspect they’re right. I think it would be beneficial in so many ways however if non-Amish youth spent a month or a summer working on an Amish farm or business.

We used to have National Service in the UK for young men. This was stopped in the late 50’s (I think). These days you here the generation just in front of mine saying “They should bring back National Service”. Maybe they should have Amish Service. Not sure some of the UK yobs would be able to cope though. They’d end up leading the Amish youth astray.